


Lucky

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But not very divergent, F/M, POV Riley Blue, Surreal sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 10:58:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12529776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: Capheus isn't the first sensate Riley meets, but he is the first one who feels real.





	Lucky

Capheus is not the first member of the cluster Riley meets. First come Will and Nomi and Lito. But those meetings are all surreal or at least only half real—she doesn’t totally believe in them, she believes in them and doesn’t at the same time. Yes, she knows she was in Mexico and Chicago and San Francisco. She doesn’t believe those were hallucinations, not really. But they were out of body experiences, quick and hazy. Capheus is much more solid.

He comes to her. They don’t switch places, or glimpse each other in mirrors. He sits down at her table, and when she tells him they are in London, he believes her, and rather than stunned he is delighted.

“Sherlock Holmes. Harry Potter!” He spits out references to England eagerly. Riley, originally from Iceland, knows the feeling—she used to think London had to be a very exciting place. When she finally came here to live she came because part of her saw it as one of the best places on Earth, the most cultured and the safest at the same time. But she lost that delight. She had been numb. London was good for her, but for all its wonders it could never quite revive her.

Capheus is not numb. He even drinks the tea as if it is one of Harry’s magic potions, sipping cautiously but grinning at the same time. He puts it down gently. “It’s good.”

He shows her the streets of Nairobi. More otherworldly than Mexico or Chicago or San Franciso in some ways—the people look more different, as does the landscape—but she believes it more firmly, again, because he is there.

“It’s hot,” she says.

They are sitting in London again. He shakes his head. “I think here it is very cold.”

But when he leaves her, she feels like the room has somehow gotten warmer, as if Nairobi heat has crept into her bloodstream. His presence lingers in the air and in her mind.

* * *

 

Will Gorski is a good man. He’s very friendly—good for a casual chat at a bar, good for a phone conversation that somehow still feels less real than sitting at table with Capheus, less lucid in some way. And he is brave. He saves Riley from Nyx. Riley doesn’t know anyone else who could have done that—certainly she knows she was doing a poor enough job of saving herself.

She is thankful to him. And she thinks about him often in the days that follow, thinks about how he saved her, hopes he is doing well. He is on her mind, and she hopes he will visit soon.

But she doesn’t hope hard enough to wish him into being. It’s not an acute feeling, just a vague sense that she will see him again. To tell the truth she hopes it will be a while. Will is trouble. He seeks it out, he feeds on it. Trouble is something she has enough of.

So she hopes she will see him again…but not just now. In the meantime, she tries to recoup. She gets a room at a hotel under a fake name with a fake ID (she has a few of those) and calls her father. He tells her she should come home. She is not sure.

She is sitting on the hotel bed when arousal hits her like a gut punch. She gasps, leans over slightly as she spreads her legs apart, and when she looks up…

She is straddling Capheus’ waist.

Their faces are inches apart.

Capheus’ eyes widen slightly. His pupils are blown and his face is screwed up just a bit. “Hello,” he says slowly.

They are in Nairobi. She is squashed between his chest and the dashboard. Heat presses against her skin. She leans against him, letting him take her weight. “Hello.”

He clasps her waist, hands so solid and strong and warm. “I am waiting for someone,” he says in a breathless voice. “A little girl. This is not the best time.”

“How much time do you have?”

“An hour, maybe.” His voice is growing softer and softer every time he speaks, but she doesn’t strain to hear him.

She touches his chest. The shirt is damp with sweat. “I think we have time.” Their faces are so close she’s speaking into his lips. And when he does not object, she puts her mouth on his, and sucks.

Then they are in her hotel room again, and she shoves him down on the mattress. She’s impatient to get his clothes off and in the time it takes her to blink they fade away. He’s naked, bare chest, bare legs, bare cock. But she’s still real and solid and she’s still wearing all her clothes and her panties are getting very, very wet.

Between kisses and bites she pulls off her pants and underwear and then, with a deep breath, she takes him in. He’s as good as she imagined—and yes, she imagined it. But she thinks maybe he’s imagined it too. Just a hunch.

Sometimes when she loses focus she finds herself elsewhere, drifting. Suddenly she’s kissing a black woman, or pressed against a pale skinned man with a beard on an open balcony. One minute she’s caressing Capheus on her bed and the next they’re in a lukewarm pool, entangled in far too many limbs to be alone. And it’s weird and it should be off putting but she barely cares. Wherever she goes, Capheus is with her, even when she can’t see him. And when she comes, they’re back in the hotel room, and Capheus comes seconds later, and then they are lying next to each other panting, and their hands entwine. She closes her eyes and when she opens them he is gone.

Well. He has a little girl to pick up in Nairobi. And she needs to take a shower.

* * *

 

Capheus’ third visit takes a while, but out of all the visits she receives from the cluster, it feels the most miraculous. A man showing up to talk to you in your apartment is odd, and a woman appearing next to you on a park bench feels a little magical, and a man taking over your body to fight off an attacker feels like something out of a science fiction or horror film, but a man showing up in a flying airplane is outright angelic.

He is delighted by the height, by the beauty of the view. She feels something stir in her at his delight, yet she cannot quite feel it with him. The sky is lovely. Going home is lovely. But she shouldn’t be doing this. Iceland is very bad for her and she is very bad for her friends in Iceland, and it feels wrong to be happy when she should be feeling only guilt.

“You are lucky,” he says, grinning. “You get to fly up in the air like a bird.”

“That’s privileged,” she says, “not lucky.”

She knows she comes across as a little short. He is taken aback, and she bites her lip. To reassure him she takes his hand and holds it gently, and he relaxes back in his seat.

She can’t help but remember the last time she held his hand. But she doesn’t bring it up. The heat of the moment is gone, and now she feels embarrassed at having had sex with someone who is almost a stranger. And yet he is not a stranger, not at all—but he should be, and it is hard to articulate what she feels for him.

“You are lucky because you are going home to your father,” Capheus says after a long moment. “My father is dead. I would do anything to see him again.”

Part of her rebels at that. He has a mother. He has friends. Where is her mother, and where is Magnus, and where is her daughter? She should be going home to them. She should…

She swallows. No. He is right. There are many people she still has left, and she has been avoiding them. And it will be good to see her father again.

She smiles slightly. “Perhaps you can meet him.”

“I would like to.”

And he does what she thought would be impossible—gently, gently, he kisses her on the lips. Not moved by someone else’s fierce arousal now, but only by a tender curiosity. She kisses him back before he fades away.

* * *

 

He doesn’t come to meet her father. He comes, rather, to meet her husband and daughter—an odd thing for a lover to do, and yet it feels right. Necessary.

“I never told anyone before,” she confesses. “Some of them already knew. Others…I didn’t want them to know.” She didn’t want it to be real.

He puts an arm around her and hugs her tight.

“I loved him. Magnus. And I loved my daughter, but I couldn’t go to the funeral.” She chokes on something in her throat. “He was my husband. She was my baby…”

He holds her.

“I couldn’t say goodbye.”

Then they are in Nairobi again, in his beat up bus, sitting in the seats. He is still cradling her. “I had a sister once,” he says. “I loved her too.”

He tells her a story of hunger and thirst and desperation. Physical need like Riley has never known her life has shaped him. He tells her of loss—loss he had to endure by choice, loss his mother chose for the good of the one she lost. “My sister did not die,” he says. “She may still be alive somewhere. But I felt like she was dead.”

He does not cry but he shakes a little, and she hugs him back. He has always been comforting her, sturdying her, and now she tries to give him a little of her strength, at least enough to finish the story.

“Life and death are mixed together,” he says, when he has recovered himself. “They are so entwined…Sometimes you can’t make sense of what is an ending and what is a beginning. Things are ending and beginning all the time.”

She wants to ask him what they are beginning, what life has for them together. But the mood is wrong again. Instead, they lean against each other until Amondi returns to the bus and Riley must return to the cemetery and finally get up off the ground, kiss the stones, and walk away.

* * *

 

That night when she goes to bed she drifts off to Nairobi and lies in bed with him. He wakes up, just a little, and wraps his body around hers. The house is hot but she clings to him nonetheless, embracing humidity and letting their sweat mingle.

“There is something I must do soon,” Capheus murmurs. He is not fully awake, and he speaks into her ear. “There is something…”

“What is it?”

He opens his eyes slightly, then shuts them. He sighs. “Will you lie with me, tonight?”

She kisses his chin. “That is what I came here for.”

“We are lucky,” he says. “We are very lucky.”

And she agrees.

**Author's Note:**

> I rewatched Sense8 Season One with my roommate and we decided Capheus/Riley was a ship with a lot of chemistry. So this piece is for them with as little canon divergence as possible. I hope you enjoyed.


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